BetterAid.Org

An update from the CONCORD AidWatch network, “EU aid in jeopardy?” released as a prelude to this year’s AidWatch report and in advance of the publication of the annual OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) aid figures, finds that the European aid landscape has been severely altered by the financial crisis.

Before the worst effects of the crisis became apparent, last year’s AidWatch report showed that EU aid was far from reaching the set collective interim target of 0.56% of Gross National Income (GNI) by 2010. Furthermore, aid inflation - meaning including expenditures such as debt relief, student and refugee costs in official aid figures - was common practice across European member states.

Briefing by the North-South Institute

Over the last decade, official aid policy debates have increasingly centred on improving aid effectiveness. The origins for this focus can be traced to the 1995 OECD-Development Assistance Committee statement, “Shaping the 21st Century”. Momentum grew in the 2000s, with a series of High Level Forums on Aid Effectiveness, including the 2005 meeting that resulted in the Paris Declaration. Along with the Millennium Development Goals, the Paris Declaration and its 2008 companion (the Accra Agenda for Action) now represent the key international frameworks for donor and developing country efforts on aid effectiveness.

Read the full brief here:  http://www.nsi-ins.ca/english/pdf/Issues%20Brief%20Sept.pdf

Eurodad has identified public procurement policies and practices by developing country governments and aid agencies as a key area in which more progress is needed in order to improve the effectiveness of official development assistance. Public procurement accounts for up to 40 percent of GDP in some developing countries. Besides being an important share of these countries’ economies, procurement policies are an important instrument to achieve socioeconomic goals such as economic development, poverty eradication and social equity. Procurement policies are also an important policy tool in the hands of governments to boost the national socio-economic fabric as part of their development strategies to gradually reduce aid dependence.